


The Test

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [38]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-27
Updated: 2017-08-27
Packaged: 2018-12-20 09:43:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11918238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: Cheedo and the Dag visit a healing Furiosa to ask a particular question...





	The Test

“Cheedo’s been gathering stories,” the Dag said shyly, tugging on one of her braids.

“From the Mothers,” Fragile agreed. “And I tell them to the Pups, so no one forgets the Green Place.”

Furiosa nodded, pretending that it was her wounds that stole the breath from her lungs, and closed her throat with tears. She was still bed-bound, just well enough to be bored with it now. The Wives had been coming by to keep her company, give her updates on the Citadel and how they were reshaping everything down to the rocks. Literally: Toast had been bragging about knocking the teeth out of Joe’s old balcony room just a few days ago.

“And, well, they still call us the Wives. The Wretched and the Pups,” the Dag pulled too hard at her hair, and winced, and leaned out of her chair to pick up Pheona instead, running her runed fingers down the vixen’s back. “They don’t mean harm by it. But we are not things, and it’s a denomination conundrum. Names _mean_ things.”

“So,” Cheedo rushed in a little too quickly, smiling. “I thought of a plan, and Annie said yes and so did Chess, and that we should ask you too, since you’re Vuvalini.”

“Ask me what?” Furiosa forced out the words like wind from a bellows, and winced at how rusty and wounded they sounded. More than a hundred and fifty days doing nothing but sleeping and drinking and pissing, but she could barely say three words without sounding like a corpse.

Cheedo bounced on her feet a little, causing a wordless protest from her bat-daemon, who as usual was hiding in her hair from the sunlight. “We want to take the Mother’s Test,” she said, looking between Furiosa and the Dag. “We want to be Queens.”

“Even if we’re not witches,” the Dag muttered, and her daemon’s ears twitched in agreement. “It wasn’t unheard of, even in the Green Place.”

Furiosa found that she didn’t have an answer. Cheedo’s news burrowed down deep inside her, down to the place where the Green Place used to be, and Val, and the Keeper of Seeds. The Hell Cats. Her mother. The list went on and on, and Furiosa felt numb in its wake. The Vuvalini were dead, and so was her home. She looked up at the two former Wives, wondering what it was they wanted out of this. Freedom? Safety?

“We’ve talked with the Mothers,” Pheona said, almost gentle. “There’ll never be a better chance to start the clans again. If we do this, we’ll be Queens of the Citadel, not Joe’s Wives. We’ll be our own.”

“What are you asking me?” Furiosa rasped, mentally stabbing the hot, low surge of jealousy that ran through her stomach. The Green Place did not belong to her, it never had. The Vuvalini were their own creatures, and she was not truly one of them. If the last of the Many Mothers chose to pass their clans on to the Wives, then Furiosa had no say in it.

Cheedo and the Dag glanced at each other, and the Dag reached out to wrap Cheedo’s hand in hers. It must have been for her own courage as much as Cheedo’s, because it was the Dag who said, “We want you to be our Mother,” and stalled Furiosa’s unsteady breathing. She stared for a moment, two, before the lack of air caught up to her and she coughed.

The coughs went on for too long, but not as long as they had ten days ago. Cheedo rushed to fill her cup with water, hold it out with hands that did not tremble. She, of all the Wives, had aged the most on the Fury Road. Furiosa drank a little, to hide the fear on her face, and stared at her lap so she didn’t see the hope in their eyes. She didn’t know what to make of this.

“You want me to stand in for Initiate Mother? For all of you?”

“Of course,” Pheona said, laying her ears flat. She was worried too. “You took us out of the Vault. You led us through the Wastes, and brought us back again so we could turn this place into a home. We never had a mother, not like – not like Angharad did, but I can’t imagine something more qualifying than that.” She only stumbled a little on Angharad’s name. Considering that Capable still couldn’t say it without tears, the fox daemon was doing well.

Furiosa swallowed twice, took another drink from her cup. She had not taken them to be kind. She had taken them because she hated the Vault, and Joe, and the Citadel. It had been hate that put them in the War Rig, not love or protection or any of the things they were saying.

 _You could have left them, after the storm,_ a voice like Aurelio’s whispered to her. _He said ‘you can get in’ and you said ‘not without them.’ That is who you are._

“I need to think,” she said at last, stretching down to set the cup on the floor. Cheedo rushed to take it from her instead, to spare her sides the pain, and Furiosa let her. “I need to talk to Aurelio.”

“Okay,” Cheedo said, at the same time the Dag said,

“Of course!”

The two looked at each other and smiled sheepishly. They made Furiosa’s heart hurt, that they looked so boldly and touched so openly. Part of it was from their time in the Vault; living intertwined with others in such a small space changed them, redrew the lines between person and daemon and person. Part of it was a delicate thing, deeper than trust, something vital and growing. And now, because of what they were making the Citadel into, it was a thing they could show the world. That they could give sunlight to, and air to breathe.

“Capable will come by tomorrow; she’s got things to ask about greens and trade and things. If you know then, tell her.”

“And if you don’t, I’ll come back with stories the next day,” Cheedo said, terribly eager. Furiosa sighed, feeling the familiar pain shoot through her ribs and lungs.

“We’ll let you sleep,” the Dag said, crooking one finger around Cheedo’s pinky. “And think.”

“Yes, right.” Cheedo smiled at Furiosa first, then let the Dag drag her up and out of the room, still full of hope and light on her feet.

She was alone. Furiosa stared after them a while, and then out through the window, where a square of Wasteland blue stared back at her. No sign of Aurelio. She caved into the impulse to reach out to him, tugged lightly on the unbreakable part of their bond. It was a weakness. She did not want to be alone. Before the Road War, she would have cursed herself for it, but Joe was dead and she had killed him, and if that meant she didn’t got to see her daemon then what had been the point?

Besides. She had a few questions to ask him about what he remembered of the Mother’s Tests.


End file.
